lordarka
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JPetty wrote:
The subject matter doesn't bother me nearly as much as the snarky comments and debate over said subject matter.
The debate bothers you? Or just the snarky comments?
For the record, I live where guns abound and the person who doesn't own one or more guns is the anomaly rather than the norm. It is a sad day when the gun is to blame for the pitiful state of current affairs rather than the attitude behind the gun.
I grew up in that environment too... even shot competitively for a while. To argue that a person's attitude can't be influenced by the presence or absence of a gun seems a little shortsighted. While most gun owners are lawful, many people I grew up around would do really terrible things to animals that they probably would not have been able to do if they didn't have access to guns. Emanuel Kant said that "[w]e can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." I know people who, outside of any hunting context, used guns to visit terrible cruelty on wild and domestic animals. Their bloodlust was matched only by their fetishism for firearms. Widespread access to firearms is not an unqualified good, regardless of what their advocates might tell you.
While I am not saying that weapons cause people to kill others, you cannot deny that the fundamental purpose of a firearm, especially a sidearm, is to fatally injure or kill another living thing. Shooting paper targets is an incidental, rather than fundamental, use. That purpose and capability can influence a weapon's possessor to act with a boldness that they might not otherwise contemplate.
Get real. It is a picture. The picture had the background replaced. Period! Look at and answer the question asked rather than create a diatribe on the subject matter.
I've never understood the urge on this forum to focus on the procedure rather than the substance. Critique of an image should capture both the perceived message conveyed by the image, and the technical artistry that underlies to its creation. To focus on the latter to the the exclusion of the former impoverishes the overall discussion. If you post a picture of a controversial subject, why should discussion of the controversy be off limits? Perhaps your self professed immersion in a "culture of guns" prevents you from realizing that, in most of the world, possession of a firearm is hardly perceived as ordinary or a fundamental right. Even in the United States, no court has ever successfully ruled that the "right to bear arms" is not subject to substantial regulation by the state.
As for a critique... I am not sure what you are trying to achieve with the shot, other than, as you say, experimentation or fun. It's a hairy arm with a gun, a watch, and a rather out-of-place muslin-like background. The background you've chosen would be appropriate for a yearbook picture, yet you've found a somewhat different use for it. While the juxtaposition might've been interesting, I'm not sure that it's working for me.
Arka C.
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